And Justine Henin just re-retired. The circle is complete.
Imho, tennis started having the same disadvantages of all judged sports: favoritism, regionalism, nationalism, etc. Like all judged sports (figure skating, diving, etc.) it’s no longer perceived as a fair competition. I saw on sportscenter the other night that players can now call replay challenges on the judges, but I think it’s too little, too late.
Also, I think that tennis became too watered down. Before, with 5 championships per year, they actually meant something. Now, you get like 50+ televised tournaments a year or something. Who cares about the Big Red Fresh Breath Open?
Who perceives it as unfair? If you think tournaments in the U.S. are staffed only by Americans, you’re wrong. (Even if that were true, the tour in more international than ever.) The referees and line judges come from around the world, same as the players. I wish there were replays on more courts, but they are moving in the right direction there.
I can’t think of another way to say this: you don’t know what you’re talking about. There were never “5 championships per year.” Never, ever, ever. There are four really big events (the majors; you might be counting the year-end tournament as the fifth) and a lot of other tournaments of varying sizes around the world. The non-major tournaments have been organized in various ways over the years and I couldn’t even begin to recap the different reasons and strategies. The general trend is to make more events (I think they’re called the 1000s at this point) mandatory so the top players face each other more often. There are several lower-tier tournaments for players trying to work their way up. This hasn’t changed in a long time. And golf functions the exact same way.
Tennis is not a judged sport, nobody considers it unfair, and I am unaware of any televised tennis tournaments apart from the four majors. I’m pretty keyed into sports, and I would have to go searching to find one.
That’s true. It’s “judged” the same way all other sports are. But it’s not figure skating where you get points for subjective criteria or boxing where the judges award points based on their interpretation of what happened. The calls in tennis are the equivalent of inbounds and out of bounds calls in baseball, football, or basketball. By that criteria almost every sport is judged. Maybe bowling isn’t.
The year-end championship (the final, at least) was on ESPN2, and they do show some of the other big-but-not-Slam tournaments like Miami and Indian Wells. The tournaments leading up to the U.S. Open get the most attention. I think CBS still shows one or two finals during the summer tournaments. And there’s the Tennis Channel, but that’s specialized cable and should be considered a separate category.
Foot faults.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I hear they’re pretty serious about that rule.